Gaining clarity on our goals...
By establishing goals we affect our class in its broadest sense, as they define the methodology with which we are going to work with, our disposition towards the group, the tools and strategies we need, the contents we select for our students to achieve the goals, etc.
When there’s no goal, there’s no perspective. Our teaching becomes a bunch of contents without any backbone. Even though we teach a great lesson it is not meaningful, as it cannot be conected to anything else. There is no sequence. It’s obvious for students when there’s no purpose behind a lesson.
“... Helping students to “learn how to learn” and “how to perform” is both a vital mission and a commonly overlooked one...”
Along with specifying where we want our students to get. We must provide the tools for them to accomplish this goal. No goal will be reached if it is not accompanied by a meaningful process. This idea has been a constant throughout the previous chapters, and even though it seems obvious, it is not quite so. We tend to assume our students will get to the point we expect them to, yet we don’t help them.
And what exactly is a big idea?
As a counter act, teachers are called to redeem ourselves by narrowing things down a bit. When planning and designing around goals we help our students indirectly by setting priorities. In this respect, it becomes fair to ask our students to reach the goals, since we go hand-in-hand in the process.
To sum up, let’s not blame our students on our lack of professional rigour. We are the biased part of the cycle, since our plannings are not carefully designed. Our students end up feeling lost and not knowing what to do, the outcome is not what expected and the learning process is definitely not achieved.
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Hi Lorena
ReplyDeleteIt is true that “goals” are the backbone of any lesson or planning; however, articulation is crucial too. As you said, we could perform an excellent lesson and get a delighted observer if we have the chance; however, if there is not connection with the rest of the lessons, i.e. there is no articulation, between the goals “what is the final purpose, then?” Therefore, the goals of our lessons are not specifically dealing with one topic or another, but also with the whole process of teaching a course. It is a whole, therefore, our view must be a sort of “holistic” approach of the goals and targets.
Lorena:
ReplyDeleteIt seems obvious that teachers are aware of the role that we play in the classroom. It is our duty to be in constant training in order to provide students with the best tools to learn in an effective way. Nevertheless, teachers keep on assuming that students are going to get to the point we expect, teaching them contents which are not meaningful for them. What is more, we forget that our goal is to guide them and teaching them how to learn with the aim of achieving autonomy. It is vital to plan our lesson around goals because it is going to lead students to really understand.
Hi Lorena!
ReplyDeleteI liked your comment on Chapter 3. There are so many questions that need to be answered, and so many tasts to be carried out and all the responsibility resides in our hands. I think we need more preparation in matters such as big ideas, essential questions and teaching for understanding. Those are wonderful ideas that if they were to be carried out, the effect would be so positive in our students and in our parctices, that education would take that great jump to evolution we've been waiting for so long. I think with the curriculum of this MA in TEFL has helped us realize of all this issues, but now we need to develop the necessary skills to accomplished what is expected after having opened our eyes.
"No goal will be reached if it is not accompanied by a meaningful process."
ReplyDeleteHow can we make the process meaningful???
Donlad Freeman mentioned in the TESOL Conference something interesting regarding this topic.
He said "a language represents the reality we are involved in, you learn a new way of thinking.
What you learn in the classroom has to function beyond the classroom. The issue in question is that schools are organized in a limited way to learn a language, they have changed language into a subject where grammar is the stability."
In other words, in most of the cases students learn a subject with no thinking, so the process ends up being meaningless.
To sum up, one of the proposals he mentioned to overcome this situation was to focus on what is the student trying to DO in the new language more than what is he trying to say.